DOE’s OSTI Launches SciTech Connect, Consolidates Information Bridge and Energy Citations Database

The Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) has launched SciTech Connect, a new portal to free, publicly available DOE research and development (R&D) results. SciTech Connect incorporates the contents of two of the most popular core DOE collections and employs an innovative semantic search tool enabling scientists, researchers and the scientifically- attentive public to retrieve more relevant information. OSTI plans to gradually phase out its current DOE Information Bridge and Energy Citations products and replace them with the improved search interface of SciTech Connect.

OSTI developed the new resource to help increase access to science, technology and engineering research information from DOE and its predecessor agencies. SciTech Connect represents one of the largest deployments of semantic search by a federal agency to date.

“OSTI historically has been a leader in pioneering the use of new technologies to make more DOE and federal science accessible to more people more conveniently than ever before,” said OSTI Director Walter Warnick. “Now, with SciTech Connect, we are expanding deployment of innovative semantic search technology to make DOE R&D results easier to retrieve and thereby better serve our dual core mission – getting DOE results out to the scientific community and beyond, and getting the community’s results into DOE.”

Consolidated in SciTech Connect, DOE Information Bridge and Energy Citations accounted for approximately half of the 298 million transactions OSTI handled in 2012. OSTI will work to ensure a smooth transition for patrons as it consolidates these two web-based services into SciTech Connect.

Product Scope

SciTech Connect contains all the full-text documents and citations previously found in Information Bridge and Energy Citations Database. Thus, SciTech Connect contains over sixty-five years of energy-related citations created and/or collected by OSTI. There are over 2.5 million citations, including citations to 1.4 million journal articles, 364,000 of which have digital object identifiers (DOIs) linking to full-text articles on publishers’ websites. SciTech Connect also has over 313,000 full-text DOE sponsored STI reports; most of these are post-1991, but close to 85,000 of the reports were published prior to 1990.

SciTech Connect includes technical reports, bibliographic citations, journal articles, conference papers, books, multimedia, and data information sponsored by DOE through a grant, contract, cooperative agreement, or similar type of funding mechanism from the 1940s to today. This collection continues to grow as new scientific and technical information resulting from DOE research becomes available.

The records for the early years represent a comprehensive worldwide collection of nuclear science literature. In addition to reports from the Atomic Energy Commission and other U.S. Government agencies, this collection includes numerous non-governmental publications, as well as foreign and foreign language material. In the mid-1970s, the scope of the database expanded to cover all forms of energy-related scientific and technical information.

Semantic Search

With the release of SciTech Connect, OSTI is expanding its deployment of semantic search, an innovative technology to radically improve the quality and relevance of search results across the majority of its DOE content. Semantic search is a way to enhance search accuracy contextually. Rather than relying on search algorithms that identify a specific query term, semantic search uses more complex contextual relationships among people, places and things. It is an especially effective search approach when a person truly is researching a topic (rather than trying to navigate to a particular destination).

SciTech Connect employs a semantic search technique known as keyword-to-concept mapping. It accepts keyword-based queries and returns concept-mapped queries as in a taxonomy; a search term is mapped to other associated terms, including narrower and related concepts.

In this way, semantic search enables the new SciTech Connect search engine to recognize and make use of the logical relations among concepts in different scientific documents, regardless of whether those documents use standard descriptors to express those concepts. As a consequence, even the casual user easily recognizes the superiority of semantic search results over traditional word/phrase search results in a side-by-side comparison.

SciTech Connect also includes a number of other features, including basic and advanced search; faceting; in-document search; word clouds; and personalization which allows users to save searches, define alerts based on saved searches and create and manage document libraries.

Transition Details

While SciTech Connect will eventually replace DOE Information Bridge and Energy Citations Database, the transition will be gradual and seamless. The transition period should be completed in July 2013. Because SciTech Connect provides improved access to all the information previously available via DOE Information Bridge and Energy Citations Database, OSTI recommends that users bookmark this new product and start using it as their primary access point to OSTI’s collection of DOE research and development results.

Using RSS Feeds to Stay Current

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a way for content publishers to make news, blogs, and other content available to subscribers. For a more detailed explanation of RSS and how it works, check out RSS Made Simple from Common Craft.

You can discover new RSS feeds in several ways. On Web sites that offer this feature, you might see the Button image, RSS button or, XML button. In most common Web browsers, when you click these buttons, you can subscribe to the associated feed. You can also enter a feed’s web address (URL) directly into your reader’s Subscribe area. Most literature databases allow you to subscribe to topical or table of contents alerts via RSS.

RSS feeds can be read using software called a feed reader, which can be web-based, desktop-based, or mobile-device-based. Google Reader is a good web-based reader with excellent Help files. You can also subscribe to RSS feeds using Outlook.

If you’d rather receive updates via e-mail, BlogTrottr is a free service that allows you to have RSS feeds sent as e-mail.

For more information, see also the University of Illinois Library’s excellent Current Awareness LibGuide for assistance with using RSS feeds to keep you up to date. See also the News & Current Awareness section of the Pollution Prevention Technical Assistance LibGuide for a list of useful RSS feeds for pollution prevention professionals.

Archive of Pollution Prevention Information: What’s Out There and Where to Find It

The webinar is archived at https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/877931279.

If you participated yesterday or viewed the webinar online, please also take a moment to complete the post-webinar evaluation at https://illinois.edu/sb/sec/692437. Your feedback helps GLRPPR make these webinars more useful for you.

The presentation slides are available at http://hdl.handle.net/2142/35294. There is also an associated resource guide, which you can access at http://uiuc.libguides.com/p2. If you have suggestions for additions to the resource guide, please send them to me at l-barnes at illinois.edu. I’m always interested in learning about new P2 information sources.

Ten Most Recent Resources Added to P2TagTeam

P2TagTeam is collaborative tagging effort on Delicious, spearheaded by the Pollution Prevention Resource Exchange (P2Rx), to encourage P2 professionals to share the resources they find and bookmark. If you locate a resource that you think would be helpful to other P2 professionals, simply add P2TagTeam tag in the Tags field when you add the bookmark to Delicious. For more background on P2Tag Team, Delicious, and social bookmarking, see P2 is Delicious, my earlier post on the topic.

As an example of the kinds of resources being identified, here are the ten most recent bookmarks tagged for P2TagTeam. You can view the entire collection at http://www.delicious.com/tag/recent/p2tagteam.

Happy P2 Week! (Sept. 19-25, 2011)

P2 Week Poster 2011Happy Pollution Prevention (P2) Week! Celebrated during the third full week of September every year, P2 Week is a time to reflect on what you and/or your organization are currently doing to promote pollution prevention and sustainability, as well as a prime time to consider what more you could be doing. Check out the National Pollution Prevention Roundtable (NPPR) web site and the US EPA site for more information on activities taking place this week throughout the country; tips for increasing energy efficiency, reducing waste and sustainable practices; and news. (And of course, you can always browse through the online resources on the GLRPPR and P2Rx web sites for more information and best practices specific to your sector.)

In the Great Lakes region, the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) and the Indiana Partners for Pollution Prevention (P4P2) will be hosting the 14th Annual Pollution Prevention Conference and Trade Show on Thursday, September 22.

GLRPPR’s sister Pollution Prevention Resource Exchange (P2Rx) center, the Pacific Northwest Pollution Prevention Resource Center (PPRC) is hosting a 20th anniversary banquet for its regional P2 roundtable during P2 Week.  Highlights will include a presentation by Dara O’Rourke, founder of the Good Guide, and former PPRC staff member.

And to kick off P2 Week, P2Rx has announced the launch of the National Sustainable Lodging Network, an online community of sustainable hospitality practitioners and an information clearinghouse to support the work of this community, found online at www.SustainableLodging.org. This site brings lodging operations together with federal, state, local, and tribal sustainable hospitality programs, including environmental agencies, tourism boards, and lodging associations. The goals for the site are to provide forums for sustainable hospitality practitioners to share information on practices and challenges; elevate sustainable hospitality programs and the facilities that participate in them; increase the adoption of sustainable hospitality practices nationwide; and foster innovation in sustainable lodging through the exchange of ideas.

If your organization or community is hosting a special event this week, tell us about it in the comments section of this post.

Adding Social Media to Your Toolbox

If you’re still not sure what all the fuss is about related to social networking, and think that tweets are just for the birds, you may want to participate in an upcoming webinar hosted by the Northeast Waste Management Officials Association (NEWMOA), entitled How P2 Assistance Providers Can Effectively Use Social Media. NEWMOA, like the Great Lakes Regional Pollution Prevention Roundtable (GLRPPR), is one of eight regional pollution prevention information centers throughout the U.S. that collectively comprise the Pollution Prevention Resource Exchange (P2Rx).

The webinar, scheduled for this Thursday, September 15 at 1 PM Central, will explain how the use of social media and web 2.0 technologies can bring value to pollution prevention and assistance programs. The presenters will also discuss their experiences using different social media applications to reach a variety of audiences, and share tips on what has been successful. One of the presenters will be GLRPPR’s own Laura Barnes, who will discuss “How to Get Started Using Social Media.” Other speakers include Andy Bray of NEWMOA and Sarah Haas from the Minnesota Technical Assistance Program (MnTAP).

Social media can be a powerful tool for staying informed, networking (especially in these days of limited budgets and frowned upon travel requests), and spreading the word about your products and services without spending a great deal of money.  After participating in the webinar, I encourage you to make use of GLRPPR’s Twitter and Facebook pages. These pages incorporate items from various GLRPPR RSS feeds, such as news items, new additions to our Sector Resources, and blog posts (like this one!), so they can be a great way to catch the best highlights from many of our services in one place.  These pages also feature items re-posted (“re-tweeted”) by myself and Laura from the various other Twitter, Facebook and news sources that we monitor — our recommendations for content that you would find interesting and useful. They also offer an opportunity to comment on posts (Facebook) or use direct messages and “mentions” (Twitter), thus providing an online forum for discussion of resources. And through the use of conventions (like Twitter’s #FollowFriday and #EcoMonday) and lists of friends and followers, you can learn about other people and organizations engaged in work and interests similar to yours.

So be sure to register for the webinar on NEWMOA’s web site. We’d love for you to be one of our tweeps!

Ten Most Recent Resources Added to P2TagTeam

P2TagTeam is collaborative tagging effort on Delicious, spearheaded by the Pollution Prevention Resource Exchange (P2Rx), to encourage P2 professionals to share the resources they find and bookmark. If you locate a resource that you think would be helpful to other P2 professionals, simply add P2TagTeam tag in the Tags field when you add the bookmark to Delicious. For more background on P2Tag Team, Delicious, and social bookmarking, see P2 is Delicious, my earlier post on the topic.

As an example of the kinds of resources being identified, here are the ten most recent bookmarks tagged for P2TagTeam. You can view the entire collection at http://www.delicious.com/tag/p2tagteam.

  • Green Vehicle Guide | US EPA
  • Ground-Level Ozone Reduction Links – Programs & Outreach – LouisvilleKy.gov
  • B.Y.O.B (Bring Your Own Bag)
    380,000,000,000 plastic bags are consumed each year in America, 1% of them get recycled. Princeton SECN students explores the world of plastic, and non-plastic bags. Learn how bringing your own bag, can help the environment.
  • ScienceCinema, the source for Department of Energy (DOE) multimedia – Home Page
    ScienceCinema utilizes audio indexing and speech recognition technology from Microsoft Research, allowing you to search for specific words and phrases spoken within video files. You can then easily access the exact point in the video where the words were spoken by the presenter. The videos in ScienceCinema highlight DOE’s scientific research.
  • Don’t be left in the dark.: Safely clean up and recycle CFLs.
    EPA brochure on cleaning up broken compact fluorescent light bulbs.
  • The Green Grid
    The Green Grid is a global consortium of IT companies and professionals seeking to improve energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems around the globe. The organization seeks to unite global industry efforts to standardize on a common set of metrics, processes, methods and new technologies to further its common goals.
  • State of Green Business Report 2011
    The fourth annual edition of our State of Green Business report continues our efforts to measure the environmental impacts of the emerging green economy. We document how well — or poorly — companies are improving their environmental performance despite the challenges posed by the Great Recession, and begin to note promising signs for a sea change in corporate sustainability efforts. The free, downloadable report measures the progress of U.S. business and the economy from an environmental perspective, and highlights key trends in corporate culture in regard to the environment.
  • Check Your Paper
    The Check Your Paper scheme is WWF’s global benchmarking tool for responsible producers and buyers of paper products. It also provides a virtual meeting place for organisations who want to act sustainably and transparently when producing or buying paper products.
  • National Yellow Pages Opt Out Site
    Opt out of yellow pages, white pages & phone books delivery.
  • Thermal Paper & BPA — Trash or Recycle?
    Thermal paper receipts contain BPA. Is it a good idea to recycle thermal receipts?

For more information on P2TagTeam, visit the P2Rx web site or contact Laura Barnes (lbarnes@istc.illinois.edu).

Five GLRPPR Topic Hubs Repackaged as LibGuides

Over the past eighteen months, GLRPPR staff have been converting the topic hubs they’ve developed into LibGuides. To date, the following Topic Hubs have been converted:

LibGuides is a web 2.0 platform that libraries use to create topical guides to help their users find information. It combines the best features of social networks, wikis, and blogs into one package. Librarians can incorporate RSS feeds, video, web links, bibliographic citations, search boxes, and other finding aids. LibGuides also allows librarians to create polls and allows users to comment on specific resources and tools within each guide.

Users can also sign up to receive e-mail alerts when new content is published, either for particular topics/keywords or for a specific librarian (in this case, GLRPPR). In addition, the converted topic hubs live in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s LibGuides space, which means that they’re more visible to the UIUC community, particularly students.

For a list of GLRPPR guides, visit the GLRPPR profile page on the UIUC Library’s LibGuides web site. You can also see the list of guides I’ve created on my profile page. Please take a look at the converted topic hubs and give us your feedback about the new format.